By Jaxon Van Derbeken and Susan Sward
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — Authorities say they have identified a “person of interest” in one of the most enduring mysteries in the history of the San Francisco Police Department - the 20-year-old slaying of an off-duty vice officer.
Police in Walnut Creek, where 30-year-old Lester Garnier was shot to death in his car late one night in 1988, plan to announce at a news conference today that a woman who has a criminal history in Florida and elsewhere is a focus of the investigation, sources close to the case said.
Garnier was shot twice at close range in his Corvette at a shopping center on South Main Street on July 10, 1988. A carpet-layer working at a nearby store told police he had heard two to three shots and seen two women walk through the parking lot, get into separate cars and drive off. One was in her mid-30s, tall and slender with blond hair below her shoulders. The other was in her late 20s, with a medium build and shoulder-length blond hair.
Another witness reported seeing a skinny, blond woman get out of the passenger door of Garnier’s Corvette, circle the car and appear to look in the driver’s window before walking away. Authorities close to the case said the woman to be identified at the news conference today matches the description of that woman.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the woman has a criminal history in Florida, was a methamphetamine addict and may have been a prostitute. She was living in the East Bay at the time of the killing, the sources said. They would not reveal her name Monday.
The woman was linked to the homicide scene by a fingerprint, sources said. She has not been charged in the case, and authorities are hoping that by going public, they will get more assistance in solving the killing.
Walnut Creek police have said for years that fingerprints in Garnier’s car did not point to any immediate suspect and that almost no evidence had been found at the scene.
A change in plans
Garnier lived in Concord with his parents. The night he died, he left home about 8:45 p.m., then called a friend a few minutes later and said he was running late and wouldn’t be able to go see a movie as they had planned.
The carpet layer, working in a store across the street from the shopping center, told police that he heard the shots about 11:15 p.m. Garnier’s body was found about 7:30 a.m. the next day, slumped over the steering wheel. He had been shot with an AMT .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol - once in the right temple and once in the right side. His badge was found in the car, but Garnier had left both his 9mm and .357-caliber pistols at home.
Garnier grew up in San Francisco, joined the Police Department in 1980, transferred into the vice squad in 1984 and worked there until his death.
SFPD officers were irked
The unsolved slaying rankled many San Francisco police officers deeply. Although historically the department had gone all out when one of its own was slain, the Garnier investigation was conducted by Walnut Creek police.
Former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan, who was the police chief when Garnier was killed, told The Chronicle in 1998 that Walnut Creek police told him at the time that “the case was their jurisdiction, and they wanted to handle it.” Jordan said under those circumstances, “It wasn’t our prerogative to say we were going to investigate anyway.”
Walnut Creek’s decision to conduct the investigation on its own apparently stemmed at least in part from its distrust of the San Francisco Police Department, which had been plagued over the years with allegations of corruption. In 1991, the FBI told The Chronicle that Walnut Creek authorities were “interested if someone in the San Francisco department was involved” in Garnier’s killing.
One case that intrigued authorities involved a prostitution ring that specialized in underage girls and allegedly catered to influential civic leaders.
Garnier was one of the officers assigned to do surveillance of the brothel on the edge of the Mission District. On April 10, 1988, police raided the brothel, and the case quickly became one of the most high-profile prostitution ring arrests in the city’s history. Among those indicted as patrons was Roger Boas, the city’s former chief administrative officer who had recently campaigned unsuccessfully for mayor.
A ‘big’ undercover case
Shortly before he died, Garnier ran into a longtime friend on the street and told him he was working on - in the friend’s words - “an undercover case that was big” and involved some well-known people.
But when Walnut Creek police spoke to The Chronicle several years after the slaying about the status of their Garnier investigation, they said they had been unable to find any link between the killing and the prostitution ring.
When The Chronicle began doing interviews for a 10-year anniversary piece on the Garnier case, the San Francisco Police Department opened its own investigation into the killing, saying it was willing to pursue all leads - even if it had to investigate whether Garnier had been involved in criminal activity.
Varying views of officer
Then-Deputy Chief John Willett, who headed the investigation, said at the time that there were many views of Garnier - from someone who was “squeaky clean” to someone “semi in the fast lane with women, the Corvette, the cell phone.” Among other things, Willett said, the department wanted to look at Garnier’s contacts with prostitutes.
On Monday, Willett said, “That investigation we began created a lot of hostility between the Walnut Creek Police Department and San Francisco because there appeared to be a reluctance on Walnut Creek’s part to share information with San Francisco.”
He added, “Walnut Creek had initially been suspicious that a San Francisco police officer was the killer. But the investigation continued through the years, and the two jurisdictions developed greater trust as officers from both departments worked together and developed information that was able to get them to the point they are now.”
Then-Police Chief Frank Jordan right led police brass into Mission Dolores Basilica to attend the funeral for Lester Garnier in 1988. Garnier was shot to death in Walnut Creek. The Chronicle 1988
Copyright 2008 The San Francisco Chronicle